Les aventures des hommes et des machines

Ludvik Askenazy, “Les aventures des hommes et des machines”. Edité en 1958 , Maison d'Edition Technique a Prague, a l'occasion de l' Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles, 1958.

Blue Bicycle

you drop it right there

your blue bicycle


in the almost-grass of april

and it sinks in 


just a little bit

like a tired dinosaur


the blue kind

i don’t know all the kinds


you talk about them a lot

but i always forget

David Luetke

Sandwich People

Cubist costumes designed by Ivan Puni as advertisements for his exhibition at Der Sturm Gallery, Berlin, feb.1921.

The Hills

Purity, solitude? There. They are grey. Intact greys not even the idle foot surprised, supremely light. Greys beside Nothing, melancholy and beautiful, which the air shelters like a soul, visible
because so true to its object: waiting always. To be! And even more remote, for smoke, for eyes of the most distracted, a secure Nothingness: the perfect grey on tender aridness, grey of those hills!
Jorge Guillén
translated by Julian Palley 

A Rabbit Displaying Churchill's Victory Sign

Demon Telegraph Magazine, April-May 1945. Courtesy Davenport Magic Company, London.

Σκέψεις για το αντι-μανιφέστο μιας Σοσιαλιστικής Γλυπτικής

To 1923 ο Βλαντιμίρ Τάτλιν, σ' ένα ατέλειωτο σχέδιο, αποπειράθηκε ανεπιτυχώς να σχεδιάσει την παραγωγή μιας κατσαρόλας με πολλαπλές χρήσεις (τηγάνι και τσαγιέρα μαζί). Ασφαλώς δεν είναι η πρώτη φορά που διαπιστώνουμε την αδυναμία ενός σημαντικού καλλιτέχνη να είναι ταυτόχρονα και καλός σχεδιαστής αντικειμένων. Όμως αυτό που έχει περισσότερο ενδιαφέρον στην περίπτωσή του είναι οι ιδεολογικές αντιφάσεις που βρίσκονται στην καρδιά της σοβιετικής πρωτοπορίας (και όχι μόνο). Ο Τάτλιν στη διάρκεια των χρόνων της Οκτωβριανής Επανάστασης, μαζί με άλλους στρατευμένους συντρόφους, απορρίπτει τα παραδοσιακά εκφραστικά μέσα και μ' ένα προγραμματικό, διακηρυγματικό λόγο μέσω δημοσιεύσεων ανακοινώνει το πάθος του για τα αντικείμενα καθημερινής χρήσης που θα είναι πολύτιμα στο χαμηλόμισθο εργάτη. Μπορεί κάποιοι από το στενό κύκλο των Προντουκτιβιστών να τα καταφέρνουν καλύτερα -όπως στη περίπτωση των σχεδιαστικών εφαρμογών της Stepanova και της Popova στη βιομηχανία των υφασμάτων -  όμως η δυσκολία του  εμπνευστή  του μνημείου της Τρίτης Διεθνούς να θέσει τον εαυτό του αποκλειστικά στη βελτίωση των συνθηκών των εργατών έχει ειδικό ενδιαφέρον, γιατί αποτελεί διακαή πόθο κάθε καλλιτέχνη που ονειρεύεται να έχει τη δεξιοτεχνία ενός Ηφαίστου και να απολαμβάνει ταυτόχρονα τις τιμές ενός Απόλλωνα. Ο καθένας από τη συντεχνία των εικαστικών θέλει κατά βάθος να είναι ο maitre της  εμμονής του είτε πρόκειται για μάρμαρο είτε για τσόχα, ακόμα και αν αυτό ερμηνεύεται με τους σημερινούς όρους μιας σημειωτικής «επένδυσης» και λιγότερο ενός απτού υπολογίσιμου υλικού με βάρος και  διαστάσεις.

Σε κάθε εικαστική απόπειρα για τη συνένωση του υψηλού και του μαζικού αντιστοιχούν εκατοντάδες επιτυχημένες εφαρμογές από εμπνευσμένους επαγγελματίες σχεδιαστές που προσέφεραν πρακτικές λύσεις σε εκατομμύρια πολίτες στις νεωτερικές κοινωνίες. Η Christina Kiaer, ιστορικός που ειδικεύεται στη σοβιετική τέχνη, αναφέρεται στην αδυναμία του άλματος του Τάτλιν από την πρωτοπορία της γλυπτικής στον επιτυχημένο σχεδιασμό για τηγάνια, κατσαρόλες και φούρνους. Αλλά το ερώτημα μπορεί μονάχα να περιοριστεί στην αναποτελεσματικότητα του Τάτλιν να παράξει κάτι που να είναι χρηστικό, ή μήπως είναι ένα γενικότερο σύμπτωμα της ανισόρροπης σχέσης της κομμουνιστικής ιδεολογίας (όπως και της υπόλοιπης στρατευμένης πρωτοπορίας) με την εμπειρία της «κατοικίας»; Η πρακτική της καθημερινότητας για έναν ριζοσπάστη ντανταϊστή, φουτουριστή ή κονστρουκτιβιστή  φιλοξενείται στις κραυγές και τις διαμαρτυρίες στις διαδηλώσεις, τη ρητορική από το βήμα, τις αντιπαραθέσεις στα νεανικά καφενεία και τις αναμενόμενες συγκρούσεις στο πολιτικό και κοινωνικό πεδίο. Η σύγκλιση τέχνης και ζωής εκλαμβάνεται ως μια μακρινή διαδρομή από το σπίτι, όπου τα προπαγανδιστικά περίπτερα, τα εργοστάσια, οι κοινωνικοί και οι κοινόχρηστοι χώροι έχουν αντικαταστήσει τη σταθερή τοπολογία του οικογενειακού βίου.

Ο αρχικός προσδιορισμός μέσω της σοβιετικής γραμματολογίας, παρόλη την ιστορική φόρτιση  με τα κείμενα του Arvatov, αφορούσε στην κυρίαρχη φιλοδοξία των προντουκτιβιστών να μεταφέρουν  τον καλλιτέχνη άμεσα στην αλυσίδα της μαζικής παραγωγής, ταυτίζοντάς τον με τη διαδικασία της εργασίας. Το «σοσιαλιστικό αντικείμενο» ως όρος, γεννήθηκε μέσα σε αυτές τις συνθήκες ριζικής αναθεώρησης της αστικής εκτίμησης του εικαστικού έργου. Ένα λοιπόν από τα ερωτήματα που με απασχολούν αφορά στις συνθήκες παραγωγής του «σοσιαλιστικού αντικειμένου».

Η πρότασή μου διαφέρει από το πλαίσιο που το σοσιαλιστικό αντικείμενο ερευνάται από το ζεύγος Arvatov-Tatlin. Αφορά στην υλοποίηση του σοσιαλιστικού αντικειμένου ως γλυπτό χωρίς την υπαγορευμένη συσχέτισή του με τη μαζική του εφαρμογή και την άμεση χρηστικότητα. Μπορούμε να υποστηρίξουμε σοσιαλιστικά αντικείμενα-κατασκευές όπου η δομή τους προβάλλει αξίες που σχετίζονται με τις συνθήκες εργασίας του καλλιτέχνη ως τεχνίτη χωρίς να αποσκοπούν σε οποιαδήποτε εργαλειακή χρήση; Εν ολίγοις αποσκοπώ σ' ένα γλυπτό που θέτει ζητήματα ιδεολογικής ταυτότητας και που γίνεται αντιληπτό ως ένα «πολιτισμικό αντικείμενο» προς ενατένιση, χωρίς κάποια προγραμματική εφαρμογή. Η υλοποίηση μιας τέτοιας συνθήκης βοηθά στην ακύρωση της διαφοράς ανάμεσα στον καλλιτέχνη και τον τεχνίτη ορίζοντας την άμεση και  στενή συνάρτηση του ύφους και του ήθους του επαγγέλματος με την ταξική ή έστω τη γνωστή «τοξική» ιδιότητα (με την έννοια της νευρωτικής επαλήθευσης της ταξικής θέσης). Ο καλλιτέχνης στις συνθήκες που προανέφερα στην καθημερινή του ενασχόληση με το métier, είναι «προλετάριος» ανεξάρτητα από την οικονομική και κοινωνική του συνθήκη εφόσον καταβάλλει φυσικό πόνο και παράγει αντικείμενα. Επιπρόσθετα τη δική μου συνθήκη που μοιράζονται πολλοί εικαστικοί, τα υλικά που επιλέγονται και η μη ραφιναρισμένη αντιμετώπιση των χαρακτηριστικών τους σε συνδυασμό με την άμεση κατάδειξη της δομής τους δεν αφήνουν περιθώρια για την αποθέωση του γλυπτού ως φετιχιστικού προϊόντος ή της αποδοχής του ως «υψηλό έργο τέχνης», τουλάχιστον με τους όρους που χρησιμοποιούσαμε μέχρι πρόσφατα. Πρόκειται στο σύνολό τους για υπολείμματα από βιοτεχνικές και εργοστασιακές δραστηριότητες, αποσπάσματα, ασχηματοποίητα υλικά που επανασχηματοποιούνται και συναρμολογούνται με στόχο την επιβεβαίωση της μεταβιομηχανικής τους δομής, η οποία δεν μπορεί παρά να χρησιμεύει ανάμεσα σε άλλα και ως ένα εργαλείο ιδεολογικής επιβεβαίωσης.
Το σοσιαλιστικό γλυπτό δεν προκύπτει λοιπόν σήμερα μέσα στην ατμόσφαιρα της ταιλορικής δομής υπονομεύοντας έτσι την καθοδήγηση της κουλτούρας του εργοστασίου, δεν προσφέρει λύσεις πρακτικές, αλλά την ίδια στιγμή ανοίγεται στο παιχνίδι της ενατένισης και του στοχασμού, χωρίς τις γνωστές συμβάσεις μιας γλυπτικής που φαίνεται να έχει παραχθεί για να αποκρύψει τις προλεταριακές της δομές.

Source: http://www.culturenow.gr/21183/kwsths-velwnhs-skepseis-gia-to-anti-manifesto-mias-sosialistikhs-glyptikhs

The University Bookman: On Avoiding ‘Prosperous Wickedness’

The University Bookman: On Avoiding ‘Prosperous Wickedness’

Girl with a pomegranate

Alicia Frankovich

Girl with a pomenagranate, 2012

What Good Luck! What Bad Luck!

Fortunately

by Remy Charlip published by Scholastic, 1969.

Landfall

And indeed I shall anchor, one day—some summer morning
of sunflowers and bougainvillaea and arid wind—
and smoking a black cigar, one hand on the mast,
turn, and unlade my eyes of all their cargo;
and the parrot will speed from my shoulder, and white yachts glide
welcoming out from the shore on the turquoise tide.

And when they ask me where I have been, I shall say 
I do not remember.

And when they ask me what I have seen, I shall say
I remember nothing.

And if they should ever tempt me to speak again, 
I shall smile, and refrain.

Randolph Stow, 1969

Who Might Rebuild

Kostis Velonis, (Ecclesia) Who Might Rebuild, 2013

5 m L, Plywood, wood, hammers. "Direct Democracy", Installation viewMUMA /Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australi

"Direct Democracy" Show

Direct Democracy explores the changing nature of our engagement with the democratic tradition and looks to the emergence of new democratic models. The exhibition reflects contemporary social movements, unrest and the desire for change; modelling key social dynamics and possible futures. In Direct Democracy destruction and resistance are connected with the need to collaborate and rebuild. Recent political shifts such as the Arab Spring, the global financial crisis and movements such as Occupy are considered in relation to earlier struggles for autonomy and self-definition, as well as the interplay of constructive and corrosive dynamics in leadership and governance. The exhibition examines the shifting forms of political agency, in both emerging and foundational democracies.

Direct Democracy continues MUMA’s ongoing series of thematic and discursive exhibitions, such as Networks (Cells & Silos) and Liquid Archive. Curated by MUMA’s Senior Curator Geraldine Barlow, Direct Democracy features the work of a number of international artists together with artists and artist collectives from Australia.

Milica Tomić, One Day, instead of one night, a burst of machine-gun fire will flash, if light cannot come otherwise (Oscar Davico, fragment from a poem). Dedicated to the members of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative – Belgrade, 3 September 2009. Photo by Srdjan Veljovic.

Artists: Laylah Ali, Hany Armanious, Natalie Bookchin, A Centre for Everything, DAMP, Destiny Deacon, Alicia Frankovich, Will French, Alex Martinis Roe, Andrew McQualter, John Miller, Alex Monteith, Raquel Ormella, Mike Parr, Simon Perry, Carl Scrase, Milica Tomic, Kostis Velonis, Jemima Wyman.

Curator: Geraldine Barlow

Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australia

26 April - 6 July 2013
| MUMA 

Στις εκλείψεις ζευγαρώνει η τέχνη

Στην έκθεση αυτή τίθεται το ερώτημα της δημιουργίας μέσα σε δυσοίωνους καιρούς πως δηλ. το ημίφως που προκύπτει από την έκλειψη που είναι η συνάντηση ετερόκλητων στοιχείων του ήλιου με τη σελήνη.

The Individual and the Mass (ou nous irons jusqu’au bout), 2011, 50 x 70 cm, printings

Η έκθεση θα πλαισιωθεί από την χορευτική παράσταση Τρία δωμάτια / έξοδος, σε σκηνοθεσία Μάκη Φάρου και Αλίκης Καζούρη, η οποία θα λάβει χώρα στις 3 Ιουνίου 2013 καθώς και μια ανοιχτή για το κοινό συζήτηση στις 30 Μαιου 2013, 19:00 όπου θα μιλησουν οι: Γιώργος Χαρβαλιάς - Πρυτανης ΑΣΚΤ, Πάνος Χαραλάμπους - Αντιπρυτανης ΑΣΚΤ, Κωστης Βελώνης - Εικαστικος, Χριστίνα Πετρηνού - Επιμελήτρια της έκθεσης.

Συμμετέχοντες Καλλιτέχνες: Κωστής Βελώνης, Μάρθα Δημητροπούλου, Λίζη Καλλιγά, Απόστολος Καρακατσάνης, Κώστας Μπασάνος, Ελένη Μυλωνά, Ζάφος Ξαγοράρης, Αλίκη Παλάσκα,Μαρία Παπαδημητρίου, Μάκης Φάρος, Πάνος Χαραλάμπους, Γιώργος Χαρβαλιάς

http://www.campoint.gr

17.5 – 11.6.2013

Designing the magazine "Utopia", 1921

Analysis of Old Masters , lithograph by Friedl Dicker and Johannes Itten, no10 from Bruno Adler, ed., Utopia. Dokumente der Wirklichkeit (Utopia:Documents of reality, Weimar, 1921)

To read only children's books

To read only children's books, treasure

Only childish thoughts, throw

Grown-up things away

And rise from deep sorrows.

I'm tired to death of life,

I accept nothing it can give me,

But I love my poor earth

Because it's the only one I've seen.

In a far-off garden I swung

On a simple wooden swing,

And I remember dark tall firs

In a hazy fever.

Osip Mandelshtam, 1908

Translated by James Greene

Group Mountain

Kostis Velonis, Athens Community in the Kibbutz  (paper, marble, ceramic, wood, acrylic, brick, 2011) 

The Breeder presents the exhibition Group Mountain by artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis.

At the core of the exhibition is a monumental work by Andreas Angelidakis that consists of cardboard boxes of art shipping companies. Their accumulation seems to be the result of continuous, obsessive buying. Angelidakis has incorporated within the installation of Group Mountain his video “Domesticated Mountain” (2012) as well as a group exhibition with works on paper which he has curated.

Group Mountain is inspired Habitat 67 a model community and housing complex in Montreal, Canada designed by Israeli–Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. It comprises 354 identical, prefabricated concrete forms that create residences with many communal spaces which integrate the benefits of suburban homes, namely gardens, fresh air, privacy, and multilevelled environments, with the economics and density of a modern urban apartment building. It was believed to illustrate the new lifestyle people would live in increasingly crowded cities around the world but it ended up as another lost utopia of the 60s.

Andreas Angelidakis has developed an artistic voice that switches between the languages of architecture, curating, writing and internet. He often speaks about spaces, buildings and the society that inhabits them, with the exhibition format acting as vehicle for ideas and medium for his artistic practice. His exhibitions challenge the viewer both in terms of their content their format, and the constantly shifting role of the exhibition maker.

The participating artists in the group show which is included in Group Mountain are the following: Danai Anesiadou, Vlassis Caniaris, Kate Davies, Antonis Donef, Uwe Henneken, HOPE, Jim Lambie, Yiorgos Lazongas, Bjarne Melgaard, Alan Michael, Irini Miga, Angelo Plessas, Paola Revenioti, Shirana Shahbazi, Christiana Soulou, Gert & Uwe Tobias, Alexandros Tzannis, Jannis Varelas, Kostis Velonis.

Group Mountain (cur.by Andreas Angelidakis)

The Breeder Gallery, Athens

20 Apr.-29 Jun.

Someone like you

                                         Lee Friedlander, "Santa Fe," 1995.

The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Can Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century-Review

The nation state, the construct that has dominated global politics and diplomacy for two centuries, can no longer meet the needs of citizens. This is the stark conclusion of a former high-flying British diplomat who quit the Foreign Office in disgust over Iraq and who has since worked with emerging governments in trying to assert themselves on the world stage.

y the book

Carne Ross takes up where Naomi Klein, Noreena Hertz and others left off. This is an impassioned, idealistic critique of the state of global politics and the deepening rift between those with power and those without. One of the book's strengths is that he seeks solutions, though I wasn't always persuaded of their effectiveness.

Most of all this is a mea culpa. It is refreshing for a non-fiction author to be so brutal about himself. Ross was one of an elite corps of diplomats, fast-tracked to a high position at a relatively young age. He would probably have received a top ambassadorship – with all the baubles of status and comfort that he admits he found attractive – had he not jumped ship.

As the lead official at Britain's mission at the United Nations in New York dealing with Iraq, Ross was responsible for implementing policy on weapons of mass destruction and the pre-war sanctions regime. He contends that the Brits and their allies knew pretty much all along that Saddam Hussein did not possess significant WMD. Therefore, in his view, the sanctions were unjustified punishment of a people who suffered widespread privation. Ross cites experts' estimates of an "excess mortality rate" of over 500,000 children under the age of five. "Though Saddam Hussein doubtless had a hand too, I cannot avoid my own responsibility. This was my work; this is what I did."

It is when people feel dissociated from the consequence of their actions that harm is done. The author recalls Stanley Milgram's famous laboratory experiment from the 1960s, which showed how easily humans could obey orders to torture, giving electric shocks to other participants. This, Ross argues, showed not just the pernicious effects of authority upon moral conduct, but something even more revealing: "the fact that the volunteers who administered the electric shocks, crucially, were told that they had no responsibility for the results".

At the heart of the corrosion of public life is the time-old relationship between politics, power and money. Ross details the pernicious influence of lobbyists, which he argues pervades Whitehall as much as it does Washington DC. While the argument is not new, the details are engaging. From McDonald's to Pepsi, from Kraft Foods to BP, rules were bent to accommodate corporate interests. I was particularly struck by the exemption granted to Wrigley chewing gum during the imposition of sanctions against Iran. The gum, Ross tells readers, "was classed as 'humanitarian aid' and thus exempt from sanctions, permitting millions of dollars of sales".

Yet, in its desire to cover the gamut of evil-doing, the narrative loses impact. One minute readers are taken to Kosovo, the next they are told about David Cameron's Big Society. Then from Iraq they are in US healthcare. Still, this is an important contribution to the debate. Ross bravely advocates the term anarchism (a positive absence of distant, top-down leadership), which he differentiates from anarchy, the absence of rules and the onset of chaos. He seeks a new form of engagement which borrows from the right an appeal to individual enterprise and self-expression, and from the left a sense of solidarity and community.

He concludes with a nine-point manifesto for citizens to regain control of the decisions that affect their lives. It includes: work out the priorities that affect you and pursue them; identify "who's got the money and who's got the gun" (in other words, where the power resides); do what you can when you can (for example, don't wait for asylum policy to improve); help an affected family (as his parents did first for a Czechoslovak student escaping the Soviets, and 30 years later for a Zimbabwean fleeing Mugabe).I am not convinced that they add up to a whole, but the individual parts are compelling.

It comes down to on-the-ground change. The most illuminating example Ross cites is the experiment conducted in Porto Alegre. In 1989 the Brazilian city was one of the most unequal in Latin America. It then embarked upon "participatory budgeting", with citizens encouraged to join debates about local spending priorities. Some 50,000 of its 1.5 million citizens take part. Apparently the number of schools has increased fourfold, while provision of sewerage and water is now comprehensive.

His message to the elite is that if they do not listen and act, they will face the consequences: "The less people have agency – control – over their own affairs, and the less command they feel over their futures and their circumstances, the more inclined they are to take to the street."

Text by John Kampfner 
Source : The Observer, Thursday 8 September 2011

The Crafty Trickster

The Crafty Trickster, 2013, collage on paper, 50 x 70 cm

The “Latin Empire” should strike back

Detail from the 2nd century Portonaccio sarcophagus, representing a battle between Romans and Germans.

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has revived the idea of a union of Southern European countries, a proposal first launched by another philosopher, Alexandre Kojève, just after World War II. This "Latin Empire" could act as a counter weight to the dominant role played by Germany in the European Union.

In 1945, Alexandre Kojève, a philosopher who was also a high-level French civil servant, wrote an essay called The Latin Empire: Outline of a doctrine for French policy. This essay [in fact a memo to the head of the Provisional Government, General Charles de Gaulle] is so topical that it is still of great interest today.

Showing amazing foresight, Kojève maintained that Germany would soon become Europe's main economic powerhouse and that France would be reduced to a secondary power within Western Europe. He also lucidly predicted the end of nation states that had, until then, determined European history. As the modern state had emerged with the decline of feudal political formations and the emergence of nation states, so the nation state would inevitably cede the way to political formations, which he called "empires", that would transcend national borders.

These empires could not be based, Kojève argued, on abstract units that were indifferent to genuine cultural, lifestyle and religious ties. Empires – like the "Anglo-Saxon Empire" (United States and United Kingdom) and the Soviet Empire which he could see for himself at the time — had to be "transnational political units but that were formed by kindred nations".

This is why Kojève proposed that France should play a leading role in a "Latin Empire" that would economically and politically united, with the consent of the Catholic Church whose traditions it would inherit, the three major nations whose languages are derived from Latin (France, Spain and Italy), while at the same time opening up to the Mediterranean nations. According to Kojève, Protestant Germany, which would soon become the richest and most powerful European nation (which it did, in fact, become) would inevitably be swayed by its extra-European tendencies and turn towards the Anglo-Saxon Empire — a configuration in which France and the Latin nations would remain a more or less foreign body, obviously reduced to the peripheral role of a satellite.

Today, now that the European Union has been formed by ignoring the concrete cultural links that exist between nations, it might be useful – and urgent – to revive Kojève's proposal. What he forecast has turned out to be true. This Europe that strives to exist on a strictly economic basis, abandoning all true affinities between lifestyles, culture and religion, has repeatedly shown its weaknesses, especially at the economic level.

The EU's so-called unity is beginning to crack and one can see to what it has been reduced: the imposition on the poorest majority of the interests of the richest minority. And most of the time, these interests coincide with those of a single nation, which nothing in recent history should encourage us to see as exemplary. Not only is there no sense in asking a Greek or an Italian to live like a German but even if this were possible, it would lead to the destruction of a cultural heritage that exists as a way of life. A political unit that prefers to ignore lifestyles is not only condemned not to last, but, as Europe has eloquently shown, it cannot even establish itself as such.

If we do not want Europe to inevitably disintegrate as many signs seem to indicate it is, it would be appropriate to ask ourselves, without delay, how the European Constitution (which is not a constitution under public law, but rather an agreement between states, either not submitted to a popular vote or – as in France – flatly rejected [by 54.67 per cent of French voters]) can be reconfigured anew.

We could, thus, attempt to turn political reality into something similar to what Kojève called a "Latin Empire".

Giorgio Agamben

26 March 2013, Libération, Paris.

http://www.presseurop.eu

Sheltered

Sheltered, 2013

wood, ceramic, modelling clay, stone, spray, nylon, acrylic, 55 x 28 x 9 cm

The Madness of Puppets

What is this thing that I recognize, that seems to know me, when I come upon it on a street corner, in a park, or in the shadows of a theater, moving up on that small stage? What is this creature that burrows out of shadows, into the light, a remnant of something, hardheaded, often squeaking and ugly, moving with such odd, unpredictable motion, or just lying still, folded up on itself, a little warm, patiently gathering strength for some new movement? I wonder about the world in which this creature lives. I wonder more what it knows about our world.

The madness of the puppet. It lies along a line or spectrum of things. It might be a very ordinary form of madness. The madness lies in the hidden movements of the hand, the curious impulse and skill by which a person’s hand can make itself into the animating impulse, the intelligence or soul, of an inanimate object—it is an extension of that more basic wonder by which we can let this one part of our body become a separate, articulate whole, capable of surprising its owner with its movements, the stories it tells. I call it madness, but it is perhaps better called an ecstasy. It lies in the hand’s power and pleasure in giving itself over to the demands of the object, our curious will to make the object into an actor, something capable of gesture and voice. What strikes me here is the need for a made thing to tell a story, to become a vehicle for a voice, an impulse of character—something very old, and very early. The thing acquires a life.

The madness will also have something to do with the made puppet itself, so often a crude and disproportioned thing, with its staring eye and leering teeth, its tiny hands, the impossible red or blue of its face, barely human in form, like a monster or mistake, a fetus or a corpse. The madness lies in the wild actions that come to belong to that object, that seem, indeed, proper to it: its rhythmic dance, its talent for trickery, its speed of attack, its delicate way with a stick or bit of paper, its skill in disappearance and reappearance. Characters human and inhuman, close to objects. In this theater, what looks like a wooden block or ball, a bundle of rags, a thin silhouette of perforated leather, assumes a voice and personality. In the right hands, a mere strip of paper moved by a string, yielded to accidents of air, can do it. All acquire intentions, what looks like will, even if this belongs to things we think can have no will. All acquire different souls and spirits, all have different stories to tell. They are able to enter into our histories, and reenact our histories.

Then there is the intense, often mysterious quality of the audience’s fascination with these wooden actors, and with the seen and unseen face of the puppet show. Fear there can be, also an unsettling delight, the trace of the intimacy we can achieve with alien things. The playwright Paul Claudel, in 1926, described a puppet show he saw in Japan, though it sounds as much like a performance of the French clown puppet Guignol: “And behind—it’s so amusing to keep well hidden and make someone come to life; to create that little doll that goes in at the eyes of every spectator to strut and posture in his mind! In all those rows of motionless people only this little goblin moves, like the wild elfish soul of all of them. They gaze at him like children, and he sparkles like a little firecracker!” There is something in the puppet that ties its dramatic life more to the shapes of dreams and fantasy, the poetry of the unconscious, than to any realistic drama of human life. That is part of its uncanniness, that its motions and shapes have the look of things we often turn away from or put off or bury. It picks out our madness, or what we fear is our madness. It creates an audience tied together by childlike if not childish things. It is amazing, the scream of children trying to warn Punch that there is a crocodile hiding behind him, a creature who disappears instantly below stage every time that Punch turns around to catch a glimpse of him. Keeping watch on the audience that watches a puppet show is often part of the fascination. François Truffaut’s 1959 film The 400 Blows, as an interlude in its picture of wounded childhood, contains a stunning few minutes of footage showing the faces of an audience of young French children watching a puppet show of Red Riding Hood, each face distinct yet part of a unified sea of wonder. They are wildly absorbed by what they see, crying out warnings (“Le loup! Le loup!”), elated even by their fear for the puppet heroine set upon by a puppet wolf.

Puppet theater has its ambivalences. It can produce less touching forms of fright, a sense of mere creepiness, not to mention a sense of its being something trivial or contemptible. One of Goethe’s Venetian Epigrams (1796) suggests a more violent response: “I fell in love as a boy with a puppet show; / It attracted me for a long time until I destroyed it.” That too is part of the madness I would describe. It is not quite the same as the act of “putting away childish things.” There’s something so loaded, so odd about the very word “puppet” in English that it can’t help but evoke divided responses in those who hear it, even those who are themselves involved in the art. The word derives from the Latin pupa, for little girl or doll, a word still used in entomology to describe the mysterious, more passive middle stage of an insect’s metamorphosis, as the larva is covered in a chrysalis, and awaits reemergence as a winged thing. Such an analogy has some resonance, and yet the word “puppet,” itself a diminutive, still sounds a little like a child’s word, as well as being a word for a child. Used metaphorically, it gets applied to a thing or person both insignificant and subjected to the power of others—not a word people will readily apply to themselves. In Shakespeare’s time, “puppet”—sometimes “poppet”—might be an endearment, but also a term used to derogate both actors and servile politicians, or to mark a woman as a painted seductress, even a prostitute. “Fie, fie, you counterfeit, you puppet, you!” cries Helena to Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, thinking she has stolen her lover. English Protestant reformers employed the word to mock the Roman Catholic use of images and relics, the ceremony of the Mass, indeed, the whole architecture of Catholic ritual. The homemade dolls found in the possession of accused witches, allegedly used to inflict harm by magic, were also called puppets.

This book invites a double vision. The puppet and the idea of the puppet move together here, the actual and imagined, or unknown, puppet, the visible and invisible puppet. I want to trace the sources of the theatrical fascination of puppets, their peculiar powers and limits onstage, but also to touch on broader questions about artistic making. Hence it is that when I describe certain aspects of puppet theater—its ardent indecorums, its talent for metamorphosis, its dismemberings of language and transformations of scale, its materiality, its commitment to giving life to the unliving, its negotiations with death and survival, its love of secrecy and shadows, its literalness, its fundamental strangeness—I want also to convey how these find mirrors in other forms of poetry and fiction, as well as in dramatic art more generally. If the wooden actor holds up a stark mirror to actors of flesh and blood, it also offers a resonant image of our broader relation to the words we speak, their forms of life and death, our relation to material objects, as well as to our own bodies. This is why my descriptions of actual puppet shows are so often folded together here with thoughts about imaginary and figurative puppets, or puppetlike beings, that appear in writings by, among others, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, Emily Dickinson, Carlo Collodi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Russell Hoban, Seamus Heaney, and Philip Roth, in the work of visual artists such as Joseph Cornell or Paul Klee, or in a film of Ingmar Bergman’s. In their works we glimpse the fictive puppet as quester, soldier, trickster, survivor, child, angel, animal, and ghost, even as puppeteer. All of these connections help me to take the measure of the puppet as a metaphor of human making, a form of life. A wooden head opens up strange worlds.

Text by Kenneth Gross

Excerpted from pages 1-10 of Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life by Kenneth Gross, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©2012 by The University of Chicago

Gra(m)mary of Puppetry

Five years on from his last show at Monitor, we are now pleased to announce the opening of Gra(m)mary of Puppetry, new solo show by the Greek artist Kostis Velonis in our space. The artistic research conducted by Velonis takes its cue from a complex and illustrious artistic heritage spanning Constructivism to Bauhaus, besides drawing on the radical artistic currents of the late-Sixties and and different subspecies of Democracy.
With Gra(m)mary of Puppetry Velonis has charted a philosophical outlook on the world of theatre. Influences from the Classical world, where theatre was one of the major forms of expression and communication, have been worked into an exquisitely contemporary artistic lexicon to develop a kind of psychological ‘atlas’ that Velonis has constructed directly in the gallery, and which sheds light on the nature of object theatre.
Through drawings, photographic prints and sculptures Velonis offers a new interpretation of theatrical performance in which the marionette – in its role of object and storyteller – takes on a wider significance of a strongly political and social nature.
The structure of the artist’s vision – intended almost as a writing process – is used to trace the various stages of the representation together with the almost magical rules that guide it. The delicately executed drawings emphasise the genesis of the marionette -or object moved with the aid of strings (from the greek neurospaston). The collages instead stand as a kind of visual reference road map (Puppet Cosmogony) conceived as an assemblage of documents that deal with certain paradoxes and extremes in object theatre. Within the large spaces of the gallery, the humble, recycled materials of which they are made underscore the apparent abstract nature of the small-scale sculptures. As it turns out, the scale of the objects is a necessary requisite for an unadorned and minimal stage in which the actor – or marionette – is able to move and freely express him/itself.


Kostis Velonis, 
Gra(m)mary of Puppetry


Opening Thursday March 28th
6-9 pm

Monitor Gallery, Rome

Until May 4^th.

Grotto (Every Thought Flies)

Grotto (Every thought flies) 2013

wood, marble, acrylic, oil, 42 x 28 x 24 cm

The Continuous Moment

The eerie technocratic world of Superstudio, taken from The Continuous Moment series 1969. Objects float in a transcendental void of crisp glass and the quiet hum of infinity.

Don’t worry – the endless grid is a metaphor for a social state where all of humanity is constantly connected to a web of information, energy and even matter.

Source: http://architectural-review.tumblr.com

Vaquero

The cowboy stands beneath

a brick-orange moon. The top

of his oblong head is blue. The sheath

of his hips

is too.

In the dark brown night

your cowboy stands quite still.

His plain hands are crossed.

His wrists are embossed white.

In the background night is a house,

has a blue chimney top,

Yi Yi, the cowboy's eyes

are blue. The top of the sky

is too.

Edward Dorn

Collage wa

Lou Scheper, Collage wa (mural painting Bauhaus workshop), c.1928.

Silent Auction

Αθανασιάδη Αλεξάνδρα,Αιδίνης Διαμαντής. Aκριθάκης Αλέξης (δωρεά Kων/νου Νομικού),Αναλίζα Αζά,Αντσακλή Ζέττα,Αντωνόπουλος Άγγελος,Αργυράκης Μίνως (δωρεά Μαρίνας Ηλιάδη),Αλεξάνδρα Αργύρη,Αυλάμης Αλέξης,Βακιρτζής Γιώργος (δωρεά Μαρίνας Ηλιάδη),Βασιλοπούλου Κλημεντίνη,Βαφειά Κατερίνα,Βελώνης Κωστής,Βενιέρη Λυδία,Βεργίτση Ειρήνη,Βερνίκου Μαρίνα,Βιοπούλου-Βουλγαράκη Στέλλα,Βουρλούμη Ειρήνη,Βουρλούμη Ειρήνη,Βουρλούμης Ανδρέας,Γεωργίου Αλέξανδρος,Γεωργίου Απόστολος,Γλύκα Κατερίνα,Γουζέλη Ιωάννα,Δεληβοριά Μυρτώ,Δρακούλη Ίρις,Zarikian Nany,Ζουράρη Ιοκάστη,Ιγγλέση Αγγελική,Καγκλής Τζουλιάνο,Κάλμπαρη Χριστίνα,Καμπόλης Διονύσης,Καραμανώλης Στέλιος,Καρβούνη Καλλιόπη,Καρέλλα Μαρίνα,Κασιμάτη Πωλίνα,Κατσάμπα Αθηνά,Καχραμάνογλου Μαρία,Κοντογιώργου Μαρία,Κορδάκης Γιώργος,Κοτζαμάνη Αλεξάνδρα,Κόττης Γιάννης,Κουμαντάρου Ευγενία,Κυριακούλης Αντώνης (δωρεά Μαρίνας Ηλιάδη),Μακρή Μυρτώ,Μανέτας Μίλτος,Μανουσάκης Μιχάλης,Μαράκη Μαρία,Μαργέλλου Ηλιοδώρα,Μαρτίνου Ελεάννα,Μάτσα Αλίνα,Μελά Ναταλία,Μελετοπούλου Στέλλα,Μερμίρης Ταξιάρχης,Μηλιαρέση Όλγα,Μυρογιάννη Μαργαρίτα,Παναγιωτοπούλου Αλίκη,Παναγιώτου Ραλλού,Παπαδημητρίου Καίτη,Παπαδόπουλος Λεωνίδας,Παπαδόπουλος Πάνος,Παπαηλιάκης Ηλίας,Πετροπούλου Σοφία,Πολέμη Brigitte,Ρασσιά Έλλη,Ρόκος Στέφανος,Ρουσσοπούλου Λέα, Σάμιος Παύλος, Σβολόπουλος Νίκος, Σενίκογλου Ναταλί,Σούλου Χριστάννα,Στεφάνου Νίκος (δωρεά Ευγενίας Κουμαντάρου),Σπανούδη Λούλα,Τζάννης Αλέξανδρος,Τριανταφυλλίδη Ήρα,Τσαγκάρης Πάνος,Τσιτσόπουλος Φίλιππος,Τσόλκα Μαριαλένα,Τσουκαλά Αλεξάνδρα,Τσουκαλά Ναταλία,Φαμέλης Παναγιώτης,Φραγκουδάκη Μαρία,Φωτιάδης Φίλιππος,Χριστοδούλου Αντωνάκης,Πλουμή Τούλα,De Chirico Giorgio,Gregos Theopsy,Warren Christina,Woozy.

Art of Giving, Silent Auction

Oργάνωση :Μη Κερδοσκοπικό Σωματείο Δεσμός

Τετάρτη, 3 Απριλίου 2013 στην Αθηναΐδα

A Sentence

The maw that rends without tearing, the maggoty claw that serves you, what, my baby buttercup, prunes stewed softly in their own juices or a good slap in the face, there's no accounting for history in any event, even such a one as this one, O, we're knee-deep in this one, you and me, we're practically puppets, making all sorts of fingers dance above us, what do you say, shall we give it another whirl, we can go naked, I suppose, there's nothing to stop us and everything points in that direction, do you think there will be much music later and of what variety, we've that, at least, now that there's plenty of pieces to be gathered by the wool-coated orphans and their musty mums, they'll put us in warm wicker baskets, cover us with a cozy blanket of snow, and carry us home, walking carefully through the rubble and around the landmines, or visa versa, poor little laddy's lost his daddy, pauvre unminted lamb, you'd give him a chuck on the chin if you still had arms, sure as I'd pitch myself into a highland fling for the sake of the neighbors, but they say or at least said once and if we're very quiet we might hear them again, that all of us will reune with all of us when the time comes, our bits and pieces will cling-a-ling to our cores like fillings rag a magnet, think how big we'll be then, we'll spread from sea to see, sky's the limit for philomel and firmament, and there will be Indians and buffalo and a hero's welcome, I've always wanted a hero's welcome, it's due, said the capitulate archduke, doubtless they'll put us in long black cars and someone's sure to have a picnic, that's the beauty of it, someone's always sure to have a picnic, and we'll laugh when they salt and pepper their hard eggs and be glad to lend our long bones for rude goalposts, what's that, that sound, nothing, you say, right again, nothing walks heavily, nothing stomps about, the big turd, carding its beard with a baleen comb, and lovingly licking the mirror in the eggcup, it fixes red-hot ingots to its ears and pirouettes in a pineneedle shawl, showing itself off to one and all, it's a braggart and a pimp, this nothing, ups the short hairs nonetheless, doesn't it, but that's all right, continue making your stew, sun's swallowed and we've plenty of hours to morn, assuming there's to be another dawn, I'm keeping the faith on that one, my friend, my comrade, my comparison, why I'd light a candle and pray, if I weren't afraid of snipers, still, a campfire seems safe enough, at least for cooking, no one'd be so mean as to shoot a man before his supper, what's the sport in that, better to let a body leisure and sup, knowing there's no time to digest, for it's utter contempt you're after, that and the absolute beauty of wasted sweet butter, it was important that the last bite taste better, though saltless, we've St. Maladroit to clap for that, the silvertongued one, he who proved birds traitors for singing what must be sung, thoughtless, dolce, thoughtless, still, perhaps the next one will use a beer batter, make a nice soda bread, slather it with the whitest spread, that's good shooting, my darling, right between hiccoughs, speaking of which, how's your arm, you complained earlier, though quietly, you didn't want to disturb my concentration, I was squeezing oranges into cans and setting up camp, there's so much to do before a battle, don't you agree, put shoes into trees and try our hair in different styles, I thoughtfully chalked some names and addresses on our backs to facilitate false identification of our remains, unfortunately it makes us better targets...

Vanessa Place from Dies: A Sentence, 2006

Lying

Lying, 2013

Wood, plywood, acrylic, 88 x 22 x 9 cm 

The Cubies

The Cubies’ ABC was published in the aftermath of the celebrated Armory Show of 1913, the largest and most sensational exhibition of modern art held in the United States.  Designed to appear as little more than a children’s ABC book—where three pyramidal-shape characters take readers on a tour of the modern works included in the exhibition—the actual purpose of The Cubies’ ABC was to introduce the newest manifestations of contemporary art to the public in a humorous and highly ingeniously fashion.  Thus the letter “A” is for “Art, Archipenko and Anatomics,” “B” is for “Braque and “Beauty as Brancusi views it,” “C” is for “Color Cubistic ad libitum,” and “D” is for “Duchamp, the Deep-Dyed Deceiver,” whose Nude Descending a Staircaseis rendered in the illustration as an accordion in need of repair.  The rhyming text in the book was written by Mary Mills Lyall, and the drawings were by her husband, Earl Harvey Lyall (an architect who had studied at Amherst College, Columbia University and, for a brief period, in Paris).  When The Cubies’ ABC appeared in 1913, The Dial declared it “the oddest little color book of the season,” telling readers that “the book must be seen and read to be appreciated.” Source: http://www.francisnaumann.com/index.html

Yours in Solidarity

The extensive art project Yours in Solidarity that began in 2010, investigates the contemporary history of anarchism and is presented for the first time at New Art Space Amsterdam (NASA) in its entirety. Nicoline van Harskamp creates a complex and resounding portrait of anarchism’s supporters through analyses of the correspondence archive of the late Dutch anarchist Karl Max Kreuger, now housed in the International Institute for Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam. From 1988 until 1999, Kreuger corresponded by post with approximately 400 fellow anarchists worldwide. Through the study of respective political observations and handwriting analysis of some 60 letter writers, Nicoline van Harskamp re-activated the proponents’ life stories. Using actors of the relevant age and nationality, in a fully staged meeting of international correspondents, the artist suggests what would happen if they were to meet today. The resulting work is a reflective archive of Nicoline van Harskamp’s notes and copied extracts of over 1000 letters including video documentation of individual working sessions with actors and a film.

As in other recent works like New Latin (2010) and Any other Business (2009-2012), Nicoline van Harskamp addresses the power of the spoken word and its ability to shape thought and political ideals. Yours in Solidarity also charts a turning-point in the neo-liberal context following the demise of post-war idealism after 1989, whilst drawing reference to our current anti-authoritarian imperative and mainstream anti-capitalist opposition. The work, named after a much-used anarchist sign-off, directly engages the numerous theories of anarchism that are still critical today and its definition of paradoxical pairs such as scepticism and dogmatism; affinity and identity; direct action and symbolic action.

Reading Anarchism

Throughout the course of the exhibition an intensive programme of talks under the name Reading Anarchism is organised to take place on Wednesday evenings. In the closing-week of the exhibition a full public reading-day will be held with invited speakers. Guests with an affinity for the subject are invited to prepare a presentation on a book or article from the online archive of anarchist writing. Speakers include: Michnea Mircan, Geert Lovink, Mariko Peters, Ahmet Öğüt, Charles Esche, Elena Bajo, Nienke Terpsma, Frans Bromet, Bea de Visser and Jan Ritsema.

Reading Anarchism encourages audience members to read the same texts and inspire further reading. The names of the guests and their chosen book titles will be announced online and in the exhibition space. All titles will be available as a laser printed booklet at NASA, and can be downloaded for free at www.theanarchistlibrary.org.

For further information about the exhibition and updates on Reading Anarchism’s dates, guests and literature go to www.nasaonline.net.

Opening Saturday 9 March.

Text and Commentary

Beryl Korot, "Text and Commentary," 1976

Videotape notation for minutes 13 to 18

Head and Tail

Head and Tail, 2013

Granite, wood, ceramic, acrylic, plaster, pencil , 74 x 10 x 22

Night Sky #17

Vija Celmins, Night Sky #17, 2000-01

Oil on linen, mounted on wood, 31 x 38 inches

From "Vertigo"

“It is only a question of discovering how we can get ourselves attached to it again”

-a drawing by Vija Celmins

I practice interruption to get used to it, get up to get the cup

and then sit down, go out to look at the sign on the corner, sit

down, open the book to 37, “Moon Surface [Luna 9],” close

it, open my mouth to get used to what it says and then

in some weathers, it’s offered up freely and you have to

cover the books in plastic, remember to take it with you just in case

and you have to be grateful not to think things up.

Her surface drawings put one squarely on the moon

and there’s nothing to take your mind off it, no one brings coffee,

and she’s reminded of a scene where the actor talks about how

he’s scared to leap off a balcony and then he finally leaps.

Someone keeps coming to the door, someone makes a mark

like graphite until it builds up slowly on the surface.

Martha Ronk,“Vertigo,” 2007.

Hessian

Identity and product designer Ben Pierrat offers a complete brand identity for sale. His brand Hessian comes with a name, website, diverse style elements, many logos and all the other elements that make a good identity. The only thing the buyer has to come up with is the product or service that the brand wants to sale.

Read more: http://popupcity.net/2013/02/pre-fabricated-brand-identity-for-sale/#ixzz2LxEWpwhM

Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial

Training in hammering

Training in hammering from the Russian Central Institute of Work and its Methods and Means for Training Workers. Management engineering : The Journal of Production (New York) 4 , no 4 (april1923), 243. This photograph documents a typical training exercise at TsIT-in this case , a worker being instructed by a mannikin in the art of hammering. The mannikin's two left arms demonstrate the correct posture of the arm relative to the body at the start and conclusion of its swing. Mannikins, templates, jigs, training frames, and photo-cyclograms are often used at TsIT in the construction of unskilled workers in correct body postures and work motions.

Source : Maria Gough, The Artist As Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.